An official website of the United States government
During 2018, 2019, and 2020, the UMBC CyberTraining initiative “Big Data + HPC + Atmospheric Sciences” created an online team-based training program for advanced graduate students and junior researchers that trained a total of 58 participants. The year 2020 included 6 undergraduate students. Based on this experience, the authors created the summer undergraduate research program Online Interdisciplinary Big Data Analytics in Science and Engineering that will conduct 8-week online team-based undergraduate research programs (bigdatareu.umbc.edu) in the summers 2021, 2022, and 2023. Given the context of many institutions potentially expanding their online instruction, we share our experiences how the successful lessons from CyberTraining transfer to a high-intensity full-time online summer undergraduate research program.
more »
« less
Broadening Horizons: Graduate Students Participating in International Collaborations through the Limnology and Oceanography Research Exchange (LOREX) Program
Abstract International research is necessary in aquatic sciences because water moves across borders. Historically, international collaborations have been useful in conducting oceanographic research programs, which span large distances and require several funding sources. Although valuable, international research can have unforeseen challenges to the unprepared researcher. Communication with an international collaborator and professional development training can mitigate these pitfalls. The Limnology and Oceanography Research Exchange Program (LOREX) is an opportunity for graduate students to gain experience developing international collaborations. The LOREX program aims to help graduate students develop connections and gain experience in international research. During the summer of 2019 and spring of 2020, 26 graduate students from 24 U.S. institutions will travel to one of six different host institutions to conduct a research project that they developed with an international collaborator. To prepare for their research experience, LOREX participants participated in training programs during the 2019 Aquatic Sciences Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The first group of LOREX graduate students will share their experience through social media and blog posts throughout their journey. Applications are now open for the second cohort of LOREX participants, and potential applicants are encouraged to contact potential collaborators to develop a research project.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1831075
- PAR ID:
- 10446946
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1539-607X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 85-89
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The goal of the National Science Foundation’s International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program is to provide high quality educational experiences for small groups of U.S. students through active research participation in collaboration with foreign researchers at an international site and provide students with international collaborative research training and a personal network on which to build future collaborations. Interdisciplinary Research in Korea on Applied smart systems (IRiKA) is an NSF IRES Track I program that commenced in 2019. Over the lifetime of this 3-year project (2019 - 2021), a cohort of 5 students selected from three participating U.S. institutions are to be supported each year, making the total number of participants 15. In Summer 2019, the first cohort of five students completed their 8-week immersive research internship at Korea’s top-ranked university. COVID-19 affected most, if not all, in-bound and out-bound international programs. IRiKA was no exception. In late February 2020, the program was canceled altogether because no viable alternative could be offered for Summer 2020, as institutions world-wide were grappling with disruptive challenges the pandemic brought on. In Fall 2020, with contingency plans in place and an additional Korean host site aboard, the project team solicited applications. However, in early 2021, before the final selection of the 2021 cohort was complete, two of the U.S. participating institutions announced that international travel would not be permitted for their faculty and students. The project team went on to select a cohort from one U.S. institution only and continued to monitor the travel health notice level for Korea. While some modifications were made to the in-country program to comply with the COVID-19 regulations in Korea, the 8-week research experience was in-person and remained largely uncompromised for the 2021 cohort. In this Work-in-Progress paper, the three US-based lead investigators compare the two versions of the IRiKA program – before and during the pandemic – and share the lessons learned. The no-cost-extension will allow IRiKA to continue until Summer 2022. Selection of the Summer 2022 cohort will be complete by early March of 2022.more » « less
-
The goal of the National Science Foundation’s International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program is to provide high quality educational experiences for small groups of U.S. students through active research participation in collaboration with foreign researchers at an international site and provide students with international collaborative research training and a personal network on which to build future collaborations. Interdisciplinary Research in Korea on Applied smart systems (IRiKA) is an NSF IRES Track I program that commenced in 2019. Over the lifetime of this 3-year project (2019 - 2021), a cohort of 5 students selected from three participating U.S. institutions are to be supported each year, making the total number of participants 15. In Summer 2019, the first cohort of five students completed their 8-week immersive research internship at Korea’s top-ranked university. COVID-19 affected most, if not all, in-bound and out-bound international programs. IRiKA was no exception. In late February 2020, the program was canceled altogether because no viable alternative could be offered for Summer 2020, as institutions world-wide were grappling with disruptive challenges the pandemic brought on. In Fall 2020, with contingency plans in place and an additional Korean host site aboard, the project team solicited applications. However, in early 2021, before the final selection of the 2021 cohort was complete, two of the U.S. participating institutions announced that international travel would not be permitted for their faculty and students. The project team went on to select a cohort from one U.S. institution only and continued to monitor the travel health notice level for Korea. While some modifications were made to the in-country program to comply with the COVID-19 regulations in Korea, the 8-week research experience was in-person and remained largely uncompromised for the 2021 cohort. In this Work-in-Progress paper, the three US-based lead investigators compare the two versions of the IRiKA program – before and during the pandemic – and share the lessons learned. The no-cost-extension will allow IRiKA to continue until Summer 2022. Selection of the Summer 2022 cohort will be complete by early March of 2022.more » « less
-
By integrating the insights of academic researchers and stakeholders from outside the academy, transdisciplinary research promises to help address complex challenges that threaten the safety and well-being of people the world over. This promise has led to the development of systematic efforts to train graduate students to conduct transdisciplinary research, and there is increasing interest in transdisciplinary education in the graduate training literature. This article discusses the promotion of integrative ability in transdisciplinary graduate students, focusing specifically on an educational approach that fostered transdisciplinary skills in a complex, transdisciplinary, international and multi-year project dealing with invasive alien woody plant species in eastern Africa, the “Woody Weeds” Project. Graduate students in the project were expected to collaborate with each other, with senior scientists, and with stakeholders in several work packages to conduct research addressing the project’s goals. Research success required integrating perspectives across many differences, including different disciplines, institutions, languages, nations, and cultures. The Woody Weeds graduate student training program was designed to help students meet integration challenges across these categories of difference. Using the Woody Weeds training program as a framework, we offer a set of ideas for others interested in designing programs that can produce graduate students capable of conducting international, transdisciplinary research by fostering the integrative consciousness of individual students and the integrative capacity of student teams. We critically assess the extent to which the training program enhanced integrative ability using interviews with participants, outputs of the project, and the author team’s experiences.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)One of the major barriers to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. Recent studies have shown that African-American and Hispanic/Latinx students make up only 2.7% and 3.3%, respectively, of doctorates granted in STEM disciplines in the U.S. Additionally, the 2-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. This presentation reports on an effort by an alliance of three North Carolina public universities to develop, implement, and test a model to improve these URM outcomes. The project involves adapting and implementing research-based institutional change strategies that positively impact URM graduate students in STEM disciplines. Each participating department has a volunteer faculty member interested in URM success issues designated as a "AGEP-NC Faculty Fellow." The Fellow receives support and training on mentoring, the experiences of underrepresented minority students, and on fostering change. First, the Fellows introduce their departmental colleagues to best practices in supporting URM students in PhD programs. Together with their department head and director of graduate programs, they work with the faculty to understand graduate student pathways, identify practices and policies that promote success, and diagnose trouble spots. Based on this study of the graduate student experience in their own department, the faculty then develop a departmental diversity plan to build these insights into departmental practices and procedures. This presentation will overview the project design for the 5-year program, share materials used in the Faculty Fellow training, and summarize preliminary findings from surveys regarding attitudes and perceptions of the faculty and graduate students in the Year 1 cohort of six departments. The project is supported by the NSF AGEP(Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) program.more » « less
